RICH INTERACTION IN GROWING SYSTEMS: HARMONY PENDANT M.Sc. 3rd semester Group Project 10 weeks
Table of Contents Introduction 1
pressure cooker 3 ideation 4 Blox 5 Puck 5 Amber 6
project pivot 7 The Compass Concept Usability Test User Experience Test
8 9 11
Consolidation 13 Creating a Product Family
13
Harmony 13 Harmony Amulet Harmony Watch Harmony Pendant
15 16 17
epilogue 19 contributions 19 references 20
Introduction In this section an overview of the design case is presented. A brief introduction to the used concepts and definitions are provided, as well as some of the design tools that were used in this project.
Connecting Rich Interaction in Growing Systems (CRIGS) The main goal of the projects within the CRIGS squad is to explore new alternatives and develop systems of connected products that would be viable in the future. These products should conform to the framework of Rich Interaction (Frens, 2006) and together form a network of products that can grow as functionality and number of products increases. Additionally, introduction of new products to the system should allow for emergent functionality, meaning that a product on itself could increase its own value, or the value of another, by combining the functionalities. These notions should be taken into account when designing since they would recur during the design case.
Design Case Each group focuses on designing for a specific experience for a family home. The main goal of this project is to design for the experience of organizing and synchronizing activities within and around the house. The focus of this design case is to design a family of products that will help the users plan activities. For this assignment a user group was defined in the start of the assignment referred to as mundane characters. Furthermore a series of tools were introduced to facilitate the design process of these products mainly the IoT Sandbox and an IoT platform called OOCSI.
Mundane Characters The user group was defined in a design exercise similarly to “Interaction relabelling and extreme characters” (Djajadiningrat et al., 2000). In contrast to the characters of this article, the characters of this design case are mundane people. They have
stereotypical features, however also have detailed attributes that make them unique. As a result of this exercise the family Chabot was created. It is composed by fictitious characters that have unique characteristics. It is a regular family composed of a husband (Pierre), wife (Bente), two daughters (Cecile and Charlotte), one grandparent (Morten) and the family pet (Coco). Some people that frequent regularly are the neighbor (Kees-Jan de Jager), Morten’s new partner (Daisy Miller) and finally a student that helps with the cleaning of the house (Peter de Wit). These characters by no means are personas or based on user statistics, however the designs would accomodate to the needs of some of these users. See Appendix A for a full overview on the characters’ traits.
The IoT Sandbox The IoT Sandbox is a design tool in which it is possible to explore the functionality of products in a more tangible way (Frens et al., 2018). The scale model consists of multiple rooms and it is the home of the Chabot family, which means that each family member has its own room and there are also common areas. The purpose of this design tool is to explore interactions between products in the same IoT environment. This model was also used to demonstrate the products interaction with one another using some existing sensors and actuators that can be integrated in the model.
Technical platform (OOCSI) The digital platform used to connect the designs in the IoT Sandbox is called OOCSI. This system is able to send and receive values and data streams from one client to others which also makes wireless communication between multiple devices possible (Funk, 2013). This is how the information of the different sensors on the IoT Sandbox were transformed into usable data for actuators and other devices to work. For more information you can visit the GitHub repository at https:// github.com/iddi/oocsi. 1
Fig.1: The IoT Sandbox
2
pressure cooker The pressure cooker is a design sprint exercise used to kickstart the project. With limited time and resources, the designers are forced to switch to an active state of doing. Making quick scenarios and prototypes that help with grasping the complexity of the design case that force the designers to think in a practical way. Designing for the organizing and synchronizing of activities in and around the house seemed like a pretty straightforward challenge, where new smart planning tools were designed to help the family with planning in the high-tech future. However, being forced to start creating raised a lot of questions. It showed that planning events within a family setting also has a lot of vagueness. It covers a wide spectrum from formally sending meeting requests for doing an activity together to casually asking a family member if they want to join for a walk. It is a dynamic social interaction that can be hard to grasp or quantify.
The idea behind the concept is to place and edit tasks on a circular dial. A functional tool on first sight, but this first iteration does not fully respect the human nature when it comes to planning. The family is forced to plan activities in a “black and white” way of planning. It removes vagueness and flexibility that allows the user to feel free. This vagueness and flexibility is something that should be preserved in a future where most products and systems only function with true and false. Next iterations therefore focused on the more ambiguous sides of organizing and synchronizing of activities.
The limited time of the pressure cooker was used to explore the more traditional directions, close to what people already know as organizing and synchronizing activities often referred to as planning. A discussion led to a first iteration of needs that the devices would need to adhere (See Appendix B). These included an indication of which family members were at home, the ability to synchronize personal calendars and inputting and editing tasks defined by the three parameters “time”, “person(s)”, and “priority”. Two scenarios were presented that sketch a scenario where the family tries to plan a movie night. One in the present and one demonstrating the possible use of a smart planning tool. The product would be situated in a central place in the home where users can post activities and show interest in participating.
Fig.2: Frame from storyboard
3
ideation The pressure cooker helped with understanding the complexity of the design challenge. When letting loose of conventional ways of planning a world of options and opportunities arises. To prevent aimless design attempts, a purpose in designing for the organizing and synchronizing of activities in the IoT home was formed (see Appendix C). The designers brainstormed about the essence of family planning, the future of planning, the current problem and formed a vision of their own. To structurize thoughts and to form a vision, a design sprint was organized. Insights from the pressure cooker were showed that looking for less conventional ways of planning may be rewarding. The basic needs required to organize and synchronize activities were extracted. Using the “How might we?” method (IDEO [1], 2018) a series of alternative or completely new ways of organizing and synchronizing. These were described as a functions that could be implemented in the future concept.
Fig.3: How Might We’s
Brainstorms and sketching on the envisioned functionality resulted in three possible concept directions. All three had completely unique interaction styles and different implementations of time, but they all shared the same core of functionalities.
4
Fig.4: Blox
Fig.5: Puck
Blox
Puck
Blox used physical blocks to plan activities in a shared calendar. The shared overview encouraged users to collaborate when planning chores and activities. Large tasks could be spread over multiple family members. The tangible interface showed how splitting up a large task creates more shared free time for fun activities. Planning became a shared and tangible experience.
Puck could be seen as an interactive whiteboard with magnets. All the family members were represented on the top of the board. The pucks on the board represented an activity or chore. By dragging the puck on top of a family member, commitment to the activity could be illustrated. Puck did not have a time reference, which allowed for flexibility, once the activity had been done the puck could be placed in the reservoir. Puck created a quick overview of all possible activities and welcomed other family members to join.
5
Amber Amber used voice recordings to store activities in personal devices. The user could “paint” these activities on the shared interface, “the canvas”. The canvas had a vague representation of time, that covered one complete day. Other users responded on the activities using voice recordings. By stacking the audio recordings a dialogue on today’s activities was created. Amber proved to be the most promising of the three. It preserved a sense of freedom and respected the ambiguity that surrounds planning in a family environment. The central piece showed a quick overview of the family’s available time and planned activities. Users were invited to discuss about these planned activities to tweak the proposal and make the best out of their shared time. The concept underwent several iterations, becoming more structured and usable for planning longer periods of time. However, when more functionality was added and the concept became more concrete it showed that it had some significant issues. The posting of voice messages mediated a slow discussion about possible activities. Instead of bringing people together to plan activities, it created distance between the users. Efforts in making the lay-out more structured resulted in the concept losing the flexibility and vagueness. Amber appeared to be a dead end. The lessons learned from Amber is that the interactions had to be quick and easy to perform. The concept should motivate to spend time together instead of mediating isolation from each other. And most importantly, planning with your family should be simple. As uncovered when further developing Amber, flexibility and vagueness got lost when a lot of functionality and structure is implemented. A family should not be ran like a company. It needed ways to move freely.
Fig.6: Amber
6
project pivot The previous work on developing Amber, evaluating it with the design brief and project vision shed new light on the core values of the project. The decision was made to pivot the project direction to ensure a shared experience of planning and engagement in interaction. Focus was directed towards moving away from previous concepts centred on having a central hub for shared awareness. Instead, emphasis was placed on developing interdependent personal devices that would add value to the individual user, but would require a collaborative effort of more users and devices in order to plan family events. It was also Important to create a more human-centric planning tool with regards to interaction, and to challenge the required level of details needed when planning. To create the right mindset the “Minimal Viable Product” (MVP) method was applied to get new insights on a minimalistic way of planning (Klein, 2013).
Fig.7: Intermediate concept
Sketching on these parameters led the process through two iterations. The first concept consisted of personal handheld devices that had a screen on the top surface. The general idea was to keep track of your personal agenda on this device, but to input shared events, the devices would need to connect physically and be slid up/down and sideways on a flat surface to choose type of event and day (Figure 7).
7
The Compass Concept Taking simplicity a step further, the second iteration was based on the concept of moving people around within the house by guiding them to “events” using a personal “compass”. The framing for this perspective on the design task was to create “a happy home” defined as a clean and tidy home occupied by a family with a strong family bond. Framing the problem this way quickly led to two different approaches of moving people around the house. Either by placing no emphasis on planning or creating an engaging way of doing so. Both concepts were based on a personal device able to track its own location within and around the house. Orange lights on a circular LED ring were used to “point” in directions of the other devices, indicating social activities. A blue light indicated a “chore”, meaning that an IoT-enabled device in the home needed servicing e.g. the washing machine (Figure 8). The system does not distinguish between family members and calls out all users to that they can take care of chores together. Research showed that a strong family bond correlates with the amount of time family members spend together (Fine, 1989). This inspired the inclusion of a motivational element by conceptualizing the strength of the family bond as a visible “level of charge” in the device. This charge would increase when the family members - and their devices - were together and vice versa. One idea was to have lights inside the device to represent this level. Placing the devices in the vicinity of each other would visibly replenish the charge, increasing the strength of the light. The two variants were named “the radar” and “the planner”. What set them apart was that “the radar” challenged the necessity for planning within a family, by removing this aspect entirely. It was replaced with the ability to view the location of present family members in the home in real time. The idea was to remind the individual of the opportunities for social interaction that exist within the home. “The planner” on the other hand could only point to social events if they had been previously agreed upon, but it reduced the number of parameters to “involved family members” and “day of event”. To input an event in the system, one device was used to choose a day after which this device would light up in orange. If the device was then “bumped” with another device, this device would also light up signifying a synchronization in the form of a “digital handshake” (Figure 9). On the day of the event, the LED ring would turn on orange lights, pointing in the direction of the other family members that were included in the event. To see a comparison between core features of two approaches please refer to Appendix D.
Fig.8: Guiding compass
Fig.9: Bumping and synchronizing
8
Usability Test User testing was conducted with two different prototypes to research possible preferences between distinct functionalities that would shape the final iteration. The primary goal of the usability test was to clarify which level of traditional planning was preferred within a family setting. The assumption that no planning was necessary, was represented by the radar concept where family members do things together entirely based on opportunities that arise in the moment. The planning concept incorporated a minimum of planning functionality: Letting the users agree on only a day for a gettogether. Secondary objectives of the user test were to obtain feedback on interactive elements such as the cognition-based feedback and feedforward represented by the pointing LEDs of the LED ring, the colors, the bumping surface - including the animation that conveyed agreement - and the charging of the family bond. The ability to hide oneself from the system was also investigated. The complete testing protocols can be found in Appendix E and F.
Fig.10: Usability test
Findings The experiments were recorded, transcribed (Appendix G) and important feedback was extracted. In order to make sense of this qualitative data, the “download method” was applied (IDEO [2], 2018). The essence of the method is to group obtained knowledge by themes in order to spot patterns in the data.
Fig.11: Spotting patterns using the download method
9
The findings can be found in Appendix H. The main points were summarized below. • Planning: Gave the user a sense of control and could be perceived as a rewarding checklist. If planning functionality was included, it should be more specific. Only picking the day was not adequate. Planning one week ahead was sufficient. • Doing things together in the moment: Showed how convenient it can be to do something together. Added value was questioned since awareness of presence of family members was thought to already exist. • Charging the family bond by bringing the devices together: The idea was well received but the continuous motivation was questioned. Furthermore, the charge received when not doing the chore themselves was perplexing to the users. They don’t understand the concept of also receiving a charge when someone else has done a chore. • Stationary or portable device: The general consensus is that the device should be portable, perhaps a wearable. This also points to the questionable motivation of bringing the device. • Privacy: Regarding the radar concept, users express a desire to hide themselves. Muting chores does not make sense.
Conclusion The user tests showed that there was no preferred way of planning in a family setting. Both setting time aside and doing things together in the moment made sense. However, planning should be more specific and seeing the position of family members in real time raised questions of privacy and actual value of this functionality. Therefore the decision was to move forward and incorporate more specific planning tools, since there was no strong indication that the concept of interacting in the moment needs to be captured as functionality in the device. It could exist alongside a planning tool. The question of representing the status of the family bond as a visible charge was a divisive one. On the one hand, it was intended as a motivator for bringing family members together as the charge decreased, but in the current implementation it was questionable whether it would work as intended. It was clear that in order to keep it, it should be refined. Based on the fact that the current implementation was perceived as perplexing, the fact that relying on extrinsic motivation can be problematic in the long term (Schultheiss et al., 2012) and that the concept is perceived to be able to add sufficient value without this element, it is decided to remove this element going forward. This also implies that an option to mute the device is not required.
QUOTES FROM PARTICIPANTS
“All I know now is that we have a “thing” on wednesday - I don’t know what, I don’t know when.” - Participant 3
“I question myself if I would look at it that often. I know who is in the house.” - Participant 4 “I don’t care about the charging. Maybe the first 10 times, but charging loses value.” - Participant 3 “Using this as a planner works being a portable thing. I would pick this up. It’s like bringing my agenda to a meeting.” - Participant 2 “Being a twelve year old girl I would walk sneak around. I don’t want my parents to always know. It would be nice to not been seen.” - Participant 2
10
User Experience Test Next to the results of the user test, prototypes with a subset of functionalities were created and deployed in a family home with the objective of getting feedback on the user experience of the guiding interaction.
The deployment home The deployment home had three floors and was located in Almere. The home had three permanent occupants. Of the three permanent occupants one was not part of the family, but rented a room in the home. Therefore, two prototypes were deployed with the two remaining occupants: A father (54 years old) and his daughter (17 years old). They had the most stable life pattern and matched the situation of the Chabots the best. (Appendix I)
The Setup The prototypes were placed on two separate floors. The father had the prototype placed on his desk in the office and the daughter had the prototype placed on her nightstand in room 1. The deployment was carried out over a period of five days and the participants were asked to keep an observational log based on their experience of living with the system (See Appendix K). These diaries were then used as a basis for a follow up interview as prescribed by the “diary method” (Zimmerman & Wieder, 1977). Having the prototypes fixed to a specific location in the home meant that planning using direct user input was not possible. A schedule was instead implemented by having the family plan out the time-period in advance which was then pre-programmed and set to trigger the system events from the location of the designers. Changes in plans would then be communicated to the project group in order to adapt the pre-programmed schedule. Finally the participants were prepared through a brief introduction. (see Appendix J)
Fig.12: Prototype placement
Fig.13: Prototype used for deployment
11
Findings Following the deployment, the diaries were reviewed. These were the findings regarding the functionality: • When people are aware of what the scheduled activity was, they would be able to interpret the meaning of the light. Due to the fact that the prototype was not portable, participants had problems figuring out what the lights were pointing at. • Higher levels of engagement with the prototype resulted in awareness about social activities in the home and an increasing level of participation in the family. • Participants would also use other ways to organise and delegate tasks using different for instance sticky notes. The bump interaction would allow for participants to plan this sort of activities spontaneously. The findings regarding the family setting: • People assume they do not have enough time to plan family activities due to being busy with their own responsibilities. The prototypes made them aware of possibilities to still do so by prioritizing family time. • Families are highly flexible and would plan in time when an activity is arranged. • There are multiple ways in which people are together. For instance when both participants were at the dinner table where Participant 1 was working and Participant 2 was doing homework. Which shows that even when both are busy they could still be guided together.
QUOTES FROM PARTICIPANTS
“We’re all busy and no one’s slowing down and >_< and that’s my problem, I don’t have time for movie nights or to go out and I know it’s very bad… thing?” - Participant 1
“Oh also I went out today with papa, “person S” and “person K” we went to Almere. Plan to buy a christmas tree. I hope the tree will turn all ok. If that ain’t quality time I don’t know what is” - Participant 1
Conclusion The deployment showed diverse results. It did not only test the usability in a home setting. It also uncovered new opportunities for the concept. As mentioned before, families need a dynamic and casual way of planning activities with each other. Most family activities and chores were initiated spontaneously during the deployment period. The prototype did not play a significant role in any of these spontaneous activities. If more functionality was implemented, participants could have used the devices to plan activities together. It showed that the device needs to be just as dynamic as the family.
“I’m making my homework on the like hahaha Eating? table in the living room. My sister is also working on her macbook. And my father who just arrived is also working beside me on his pc.” - Participant 1
Participant 1 showed to be more active in checking what was set on the agenda during testing. This participant was able to understand most of the light messages. While participant 2 had a hard time linking the signals with the intended activity. The fixed position of the prototypes made it hard to intuitively understand the pointing of the devices. Portable prototypes could result in a better understanding. The deployment proved that the basic functionalities of the concept have a proper place in the family setting. The eventual product should however have more functionality to better blend with the dynamics of a family.
12
Consolidation
Harmony
The usability and experience tests gave insights to form the final iteration of this concept. Some findings helped to improve the overall usability of the device, but the tests also showed that participants had significant divergent preferences when it comes down to the detailed functionalities of the product. Until this point in the process the product family was created by offering a set of cloned artefacts. This final iteration focuses on personalisation by tailoring the devices to the specific needs of the individual family member.
Harmony is the final result of this design project. It explores new functionalities in the IoT home by guiding the family together for both shared activities and teaming up when taking care of daily chores in the home. Harmony encourages to bond by spending time together.
Creating a Product Family To make sure the devices are recognized as one entity a core set of features were agreed upon for the design of the individual products. Aesthetic features like color and shape were taken into account as well as the functionality, since these products should work together as one system. The following requirements are defined in order to set the core functionalities that meet the design brief. All devices must: • Be positionally aware within the home • Be able to guide to a location in and around the house • Be able to receive a planned activity when bumped • Be portable • Use orange LED pointers for social activities • Use blue LED pointers for chores • Show a greeting animation when in the vicinity of another device
Vision Harmony is the answer to a vision that was developed during the design process. In short, this vision portraits a perception of the near future where all routine activities will be planned and structured by highly automated systems. This optimization trend will make people passive in planning their own activities and would ultimately create a society full of apathy and social isolation. Therefore the design should strive to bring the family together through a shared and interactive experience of synchronizing and organizing their daily lives. Cooperating on daily chores and tasks around fixed routines allows and encourages the family to synchronize their lives and create shared awareness. Besides these mandatory tasks, it should encourage the family to participate in bonding activities such as walking, playing music and watching movies together.
Three products were designed to fit the specific needs of their users. This design case uses the Chabot family as the target family (See Appendix A). One design is focused on the needs of the twins, one on the needs of the dad and one on the needs of the mom. Together they form Harmony. Each of these designs are described in the following sections in more detail. 13
The concept Harmony achieves this with personalized devices for the family members that guide them together and help them with setting time aside for each other in a casual manner. Users can collaborate with each other in doing chores and organise themselves more naturally. The devices do not solely function as planning tools. The simplistic nature and open approach of the designs allow for growing functionality and value that emerges when these devices are placed in a smart IoT environment. The location tracking and guiding capabilities of the devices allow them to function as a bridge between smart products. It empowers and involves the user to actively participate in the IoT ecosystem of their home. By looking proactively and doing chores related to the network, users can interpret the needs of the home. For example, smart products that need servicing will be displayed as chores on the device. This involves the user in the system in a non-intrusive way. The potential for growth goes further than just creating new chores. Future devices could create new kinds of data. For example, our peers from the CRIGS research squad already explored ways of sensing social states of family members, which creates unique opportunities where people can be guided together when they both experience an open and approachable state for social interaction.
Functionality • Every device in the Harmony product family is unique in it’s own way, but they all share common functionalities to operate as one seamless product system. The devices do this with the following core functionalities: • All devices are positionally aware with the use of an indoor positioning system. This makes it possible to track the devices in the home, so they can by guided together or to chores in the home. • All devices can receive agreements on social activities. To guide the users together on the time of the planned activity • All devices can guide the user through the home by pointing in a direction using multiple rgb leds. An orange led indicates a social activity and a blue led indicates a chore.
Fig.14: Harmony prototypes displayed at Demo Day
Other functionalities are added based on the specific needs of the individual it was designed for. The mom for example has more planning functionality than the kids. Kids have a more spontaneous in the moment lifestyle than their “workaholic” mom. The next chapters dive deeper into these differences and how the devices are tailored to accomodate the needs these differences create.
14
Harmony Amulet - By Bram Concept
The harmony amulet is designed to not only be functional, but also creates aesthetic value. The design does not only guide their user through the home. It collects the activities that the user has done throughout the day. The amulet creates personalised art that exists out of blue, orange and white leds. The leds represent the chores and social activities that the user did in the last 24 hours. A random led is altered at the end of every hour. The symbolic representation tells a story. It can function as a conversation piece that gets people to talk about their day.
User & usage The design of the amulet is tailored to needs of the twins. The twins represent young teenagers that are going through exploratory times. They might still be kids, but start to look less childish experiences. The amulet provides a simplistic interaction with the other devices. A simple bump with the back of the amulet to another device transfers a planned activity. The amulet itself does not include a planning function and can thus only receive activities from the system or from other devices. The twins are young and have a “plan in the moment” lifestyle. They will seek each other in the moment to do a social activity instead of planning it far ahead. In the instance that the kids want to plan something further ahead they can check with a parent to see if it is possible to do so. The art on the amulet represents the day of their user and tries to encourage them to wear the amulet as much as possible. The art is created by looking back at the activity of the last hour. If a social activity took place a randomly picked led on the interface will become orange. If a chore has been done a randomly picked led on the interface will become blue. If no activity was recorded in the past hour a randomly picked led will become white. The randomization makes sure that the art is a general representation and does not feel like close monitoring.
Fig.15: Amulet prototype
Fig.16: Amulet horizontal state
Functionality The amulet has to functional states. When the device is in horizontal mode, which is triggered by holding the device in your hand, it functions the same way other devices in the product family would. The leds on the display guide the user through the home to activities or chores. When the device is in vertical mode, which is triggered by letting the device hang freely, it will shows the activities done by the individual that day as described previously. Blue leds represent chores and orange leds social activities. Fig.17: Amulet vertical state 15
Harmony Watch - By Alan This design focuses on providing more information to the user about the agreements that were made with other family members. The product is based on the project pivot and has some functionality that was tailored to the needs of people similar to father of the Chabot family.
Pierre Chabot He is a family man that is present in the house the most since he works part time and takes care of the household, however he is not always that structure. Inside the house he needs to know if other family members are around or if chores need attention in the home. Outside this man needs a schedule and an overview of all the activities planned for the day. As a part time journalist he need to be aware of his own plans and with others. (See Appendix A)
Fig.18: Amulet horizontal state
The target user In synthesis, the user is someone with the following attributes: • A male user that needs to plan activities with other family members. • Someone that works part-time and can take care of the home. • A person who can travel for long periods of time.
Design requirements Based on these user qualities, the device needed to be portable and provide all the necessary information. • He should be able to have access to the essential information of his appointments. • Furthermore the interaction should be simplistic and intuitive. • The design should communicate with the devices of other family members when inside the home.
Fig.19: Amulet horizontal state
Core functionality The device’s core functionality inside the house is based on the results of the user tests. The main functionality of the product is to guide the user and inform about the events from devices and family members. Similar to how the other devices in the product family work. The lights show the social activities or chores that were planned for that time and the watch is positionally aware.
Added functionality As any other clock it provides the time, however it has unique functionality when connected to other products. It gives the holder information of other family members to facilitate planning of activities around the house. If the device is outside the house, the interface will show a schedule with planned activities. Fig.20: Amulet horizontal state
16
Harmony Pendant - By David In order to design a device specifically for Bente all previously generated knowledge was reviewed to create and refine a design brief that was both coherent with the project vision, prior decisions, the core features of the product family - and at the same time takes the specific needs of Bente into consideration.
Refining the brief Existing knowledge from the shared CRIGS description of Bente was summarized and analyzed and the previously created scenario was iterated to create a more open one. This was done to further align the two and make interactions with other family members have a real effect on Bente’s daily life. At the same time, emphasis was put on avoiding forcing Bente into a certain role that was outside of what might be considered general parenting. See Appendix M.
Fig.21: At-a-glance overview. Feeling of being in control
Design Opportunities Bente likes to fill her time with both work and hobbies. She desires to spend more time with her family. What stands in her way is a combination of her general life-style and a lack of ability when it comes to time management. She needs a companion device to help her manage and reassure her that daily chores are taken care of and family life and plans are on track. Her needs are encapsulated in the following two themes: • Overview: Bente needs a way of establishing a quick overview of the general state of the home and her agreements with family members • Adaptation: She needs a way of managing and rescheduling her own time as family life is not a routine. She needs to able to change her mind.
Value mission It was noticed that the identified themes are hierarchical in nature - both in a functional sense, meaning that no adaptation is needed if nothing is planned but also, more importantly, in the sense that what Bente needs is at-a-glance functionality that can provide her with the overview she needs and create a foundation from which to adapt. To steer the design process in the right direction a value mission was created, inspired by (Lerdahl, 2008), to ensure that these abstract goals are reflected in device functionally, structure and design (Figures 21 and 22).
Fig.22: Adaptation to non-routine life. Manipulation of details
Value level 1
Value level 2
Other
Additional requirements and development
Input shared event within one week (day, hour, minute)
View stored events Requirement: Individual touch to product family aesthetics
The personal characteristics, the scenario and the hierarchical nature of the value mission was condensed into additional requirements (Figure 23) to ensure that the general-purpose product family device was enhanced to specifically address Bente’s needs. Concept proposals were then developed through iterative sketching (Appendix N) and a flowchart (Appendix O) was developed to further specify functionality and prepare for implementation in a physical prototype (Figure 24).
Portable in size and by design
Delete stored events
Lock to prevent Wish: Input unwanted input personal reminder Fig.23: Requirements derived from analysis of Bente’s needs
Wish: Edit stored events
17
Dial light index 0 Dial light index 1 Dial light index 2, etc. - up to 11
Idle device: On table or in hand
Index 0 is always current day = “Today” Today Wednesday Thursday
General Operation: Trigger: Dial turned Rule: Promt user to choose a day Feedback: Screen displays “Choose day” and a day within a week. Dial lights index 0-6 turn orange representing the 7 days
Choose Day:
Friday Saturday Sunday Monday
Device is pressed down on or squeezed to confirm choice
Fig.24: Physical prototype
The Pendant
Further development
In an IoT setting with multiple Harmony devices the Harmony Pendant gives Bente the power to “control time“ right at her finger tips. The Pendant is a companion device that is tailored to Bente’s needs for overview and adaptation. These considerations are reflected in the hierarchical structure of functionality and interface. Overview and input of events is right there and easily accessible through a rotary dial that also conveys device functionality by referencing a traditional analogue watch dial. This reference is carried through as feedback where LEDs light up according to user input. Adaptation requires consideration why navigating and manipulating events is separated into a button and screen interface.
The Pendant design includes several design decisions that are based on assumptions. Below are examples of functional and interactive elements that should be further investigated: • The same LEDs are used for both time and compass pointers. • Different light mapping of day (LED 0-6) and time input (LED 0-11). • Icons for menu buttons. • “Back” option in menus. • Option to edit events. (Investigate options to use current interface). • Implementation of lock to prevent unwanted input. • Better conveyance of action possibility of pressing down on the device.
Display these days by turning the dial counterclockwise
Menu loops through indices
Display these days by turning the dial clockwise
Fig.25: Interaction and operation. See Appendix O for all product states and microinteractions
Dimensions: 75 mm across, 40 mm tall Functional carrying strap that also conveys the portable nature of the device
Dial used to “control time”. Translucent to let LEDs shine through
1 inch display handles complex information
Buttons navigate and manipulate complex information
12 LED slits mimic a watch dial. Conveys device functionality
LED slits are curved to ensure wide angle of visibility
Flat sides for secure grip when dial is turned holding the device in the hand
Small gap to convey that the device can be pressed fown on or squeezed
Lower half covered in fabric to invite holding and provide comfortable grip
Rubber o-ring on the bottom lets device rest securely on table
1 slit slightly elongated to give direction to device and mark starting point of light mappings
Fig.26: Functionality and design considerations
18
epilogue
contributions
To further develop this concept the prototype will need to be emerged in this IoT ecosystem. The prototype will need adjustments to become positionally aware. And most importantly users should discover and experiment with the devices in the home. A longer testing period with fully operating prototypes in the smart home could reveal even more emergent functionalities. We believe that the given examples are just a first impression of the real potential of Harmony.
All group members contributed equally to this report.
19
